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September 02, 2008

Monotasking, the new black?

Managers in shoulder padded jackets from the 90's were wrong when they said that multitasking would save us from the overload of work and stress.

In our distraction addled worlds, our brains have learned to cope with the myriad of distractions by compensating and multitasking. We compensate by juggling our phones while ordering a coffee, emailing while on the phone, texting while watching television, there are even people playing the flute while driving!

But did we lose the most important part of living by giving in to our need to squeeze every moment out? Did we forget the importance of focus and actually live in our lives?

I want to propose for a moment, the idea of monotasking.

Every single thing you do, you do without thought, or distraction from. Boring, interesting, it doesn't matter.

In popular psychology, monotasking is called being present. That's a great word, a lot of the time i find myself considering the past, thinking about the future, and the last thing i'm considering is where I am and what I'm doing, it's like im living inside my head.

One of the best exercises for coming back to the present, and focusing on what you're doing is to do just just that, come back to the present and realise what your five senses are telling you, pay attention to what you are smelling, hearing, seeing, tasting, feeling. The world becomes a deeper and richer place the moment you do, even if you're just walking down the street.

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Live in the moment, as they say. Some people would view multitasking as not-really-multitasking because you focus on another task, switch to another, then go back to what you were working on, and so on. It's just that all the activities are in the same time frame. Focus on one thing. If possible, get all of the best tools to make things faster.